Page 42 - Marchant Ninety Jades For 90 Years

十 18. Large openwork finial, carved with eight cranes and a goose amongst branches of flowering lotus with leaves and arrowheads, all on an

八 oval flat base, pierced on the underside with four pairs of holes for attachment, the stone white with mottled areas.

4 1/16 inches, 10.3 cm high.
荷 Ming dynasty, 15th/16th century.
塘 Openwork carved wood stand with lingzhi, wutong and aster.
鹭

鸶 • From an important French collection.
爐
頂 • A similar crane finial of smaller size was included by Marchant in their 70th anniversary exhibition, Post-Archaic Chinese Jades,
1995, no. 34, p. 37; five related crane and lotus finials, dated to the Yuan dynasty, are illustrated by Xue Gui Sheng in Zhong

白 Guo Yu Qi Shang Jian, ‘Appreciation and Examination of Chinese Jades’, nos. 551-555, pp. 284-286; three others, also dated to
玉 the Yuan dynasty, are illustrated by Huang Xuanpei in Jade Wares of the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing Unearthed from Shanghai,

nos. 90-92, pp. 130-133, where the author illustrates one on the front cover.

明 • Eight cranes, baxian shangshou, form the rebus, ‘May the eight immortals grant you longevity’. Crane, yipinniao, and lotus,
lianhua, form the rebus lianfeng yipin, ‘May you continuously be promoted to the first rank’. The crane symbolises the first rank

and the lotus is a pun for the word continuous, lian.

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